


The Watch

by missmollyetc



Series: The Watch [1]
Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance, The Used
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-16
Updated: 2009-12-16
Packaged: 2017-10-04 11:36:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmollyetc/pseuds/missmollyetc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All right, some people might not realize this, but...I'm chatty, and one of the people I chat to the most (e-mail wise anyway) is <a href="http://dsudis.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://dsudis.livejournal.com/"></a><b>dsudis</b> who encourages my Cracked Out Bandslash AU's addiction with all the blood-thirsty delight of a Vampire Hunting Gerard Way.</p><p>This is not that story.  It is, however, the story of how I wrote what turned into an extremely long, somewhat non-linear, Gay Anti-Mafia AU with threesomes and betrayals and Fighting (because my love is PURE, Chow Yun Fat!) starring My Chemical Romance with bonus Pete/Patrick.</p><p>And when I was done, Dira said I should post.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |    
[au](http://missmollyetc.livejournal.com/tag/au), [bandslash](http://missmollyetc.livejournal.com/tag/bandslash), [cobrastarship](http://missmollyetc.livejournal.com/tag/cobrastarship), [fob](http://missmollyetc.livejournal.com/tag/fob), [mcr](http://missmollyetc.livejournal.com/tag/mcr)  
  
---|---  
  
_ **BANDSLASH FIC: The Watch (1/2)** _

 

 

[ ](http://photobucket.com)

 

 

 

Basically. I've decided that My Chemical Romance should fight crime. I've discovered a burning need within my soul to have Gerard Way walking around dressed in an all black suit and long overcoat while plotting elaborate methods of stopping crime in his city, aided by his younger brother Mikey, Ray Toro: Marine Veteran, his childhood friend Matt Pelisser, and 'reformed' criminal Frank Iero. The group forms, starting on the street they all live in and pushing outwards as they shut down the crime around them (or at least put a HEAVY damper on it). They meet at the neighborhood bar, nice and neutral in the back and Mr. Koslowski who runs the bar pretty much leaves the place in the hands of his bartender, Bob Bryar (who followed his ex-boyfriend's band out east to work tech and never left) day and night.

The neighborhood, long used to made guys and secrets, knows who the boys are, but doesn't really DO anything with the knowledge. Omerta isn't just for the mob, you know, and it's nice. The kids can go out in the evenings, you can talk to your neighbor without worrying who's listening, and the evening barbeque is making a comeback, that sort of thing. So, while no one knows precisely what's going on, they all know the Way brothers and that nice Toro boy have something going good behind the scenes.

The gang makes great strides after some...unfortunate mistakes (apparently, some ice cream trucks in the neighborhood ACTUALLY JUST SERVE ICE CREAM.) And they gain enough success and influence that the crime syndicates start to get antsy, which is where Matt and Frank come into it. Matt's got gambling debts and an expensive interest in horse races. He agrees to pass information and also get Frankie Cools (because he smokes Menthol Cools) into the gang so he can report up close and personal. Matt, although hesitant, is more than happy to exchange information and an 'in' for not having Frankie put out his cigarettes on Matt's eyes (or something. Frankie wouldn't do that—Bert would, though--but Matt doesn't know that.) Matt knows Gee's always a soft touch for a sob story, and twice as likely to believe it if he hears about it from someone in the inner circle, and not Frankie.

To cover his entrance, they put it out there that Frank's boss (Bert McCracken) found Frank in an indelicate position with Quinn Allman, and so he got kicked out. Literally. Thankfully, it was a two story apartment and Frankie hit a storefront canvas cover-thing on the way down. This is the story as told to Gee, anyway, blown up like all neighborhood gossip. Actually, Bert had Quinn kick Frankie in the ribs and blacken his eyes for 'artistic' effect. So Matt tells Gee and Gee thinks about how nice it might be to have a connected guy to go to for information if Frank could be 'turned' (and BOY CAN HE.)

Now, Bert and Gee go way back. He knows the score, bring intimately familiar with Bert McCracken's crew. So he knows of Frankie Cools, but he's never met him. What's more, Gee knows that Bert and _his_ second in command Quinn Allman have this…thing between them. This highly explosive relationship where they never _sleep_ together, but God Help anyone who gets in between them. Bert and Gee used to fuck all the time, but as long as Gee's known him, Bert's kept Quinn on a very tight rein.

Gee was his dad Handsome Don's right hand man, running around as part of the collections circuit and then graduating to more 'hands on' employment. Never Mikey though, never, ever Mikey, because Gee spent the majority of his childhood and youth convinced he was going to get shot in the back if he wasn't the fastest and the best and the scariest, so he MADE himself menacing...albeit in a very off the wall, goth way, and he _NEVER_ wanted that to happen to Mikey. (Who spent the majority of his youth in the house with Mrs. Way.)

So, he goes to Frankie's mom's house (where Frankie is staying because he thinks it makes him seem more pathetic and also. Ouch, his ribs hurt like fuck) and sees Frank all beat up and asks about it and does his 'I am Gerard Way and I CARE ABOUT YOU' thing and Frankie doesn't understand what it is about the guy but he thinks maybe Gee _actually_ means it. They talk for an hour, sitting in Frankie's mom's kitchen. Gee drinks coffee and talks with Frankie's mom and pets Frankie's dogs. He's sweet, and dorky, and smokes like a chimney and before Frankie knows it he's got an invite to Koslowski's Bar for Thursday.

Frank gets up, wincing all the way, to show Gee out the door, but before Gee leaves he leans in close and puts his hand delicately, oh so soft, on Frankie's largest bruise, and suddenly Gee's colder than ice, smiling down at Frankie and telling him in a low voice that if Frankie joins up he might get hurt again, but if he fucks Gee's people up then he WILL get hurt again. And Frankie remembers that Gerard Way is Handsome Don's oldest boy and before he saw the light, he'd grown up kneecapping guys trying to join the wrong unions. And when Gee takes his hand off Frankie's bruise he's the dorky, lovely Gee from the kitchen with a smudge of ink on his cheek and a twinkle in his eye.

Frankie says good bye and closes the door and feels very much alone.

But he's got a job to do, so he goes to the bar, waves at the big blond guy serving drinks and heads in the back. The whole time, he's convinced Matt's gonna blow the whole thing with his shaky nerves and stupid fucking _giggle_, but no, he meets Toro and Mikey and they seem like good guys. Toro's built like a brick, but he's got crazy hair he's VERY proud of and he likes the music Frankie likes and knows a lot about blowing shit up which Frankie could REALLY learn to enjoy.

Mikey Way won't talk to him. Actually, he doesn't even look at Frankie all that much, and at first Frankie thinks it's because of his cover (which 'techinically' isn't true because Bert just thought it was _hilarious_ and "just what that fucking Ger-ar-duh would buy"), but then he sees that--outside of the group--Mikey just doesn't talk that much at all. Frankie starts off small, gives them information on Bert's rivals more than Bert himself, and rides shotgun on low-security raids. He's not on the inside yet, doesn't know about a raid until it happens, etc. and Bert's _pissed_\--and crazy in case Frankie forgot--so Frankie figures the best way to get inside the group is to get inside Gee's younger brother. He's heard the rumors after all, and it wouldn't be such a hardship. Frankie likes boys, he just likes 'em prettier than stick thing, funky-hair-and-coke-bottle-glasses Mikeyway. But, hell, any port in a storm and better Mikey's pants than Bert's Glock, you know?

So Operation: Fuck Mikey Way begins in earnest, with Matt passing info through Frank and Frank making Mikey trust him and talk to him so he can start passing some information himself. Only, it turns out that Mikey's...kind of nice. And sweet. A little daffy, and he goes into his head too much, but he's got this music collection that makes Frankie would perform _circus tricks_ for, and these _hips_ that fit in Frankie's palms like…like something delicate, something Frankie's mama would wrap in soft cotton and protect. Weeks go by where Frankie does nothing but feed Gee information and keep Bert happy and then suddenly, Frankie's spending a hell of a lot more time over at Mrs. Way's house up in Mikey's room with headphones on, than down in Gerard's place attempting to figure out where the gang's gonna hit next.

One day he stays so long it's night by the time Frankie sits up on Mikey's bed and pulls off the headphones he's taken to leaving on the CD rack. Mikey uncurls from his position at the head of the bed and scoots forward. Frankie yawns, turns his head to say good night, and Mikey kisses him. Just…leans forward and kisses Frankie on the cheek like they were...Frankie doesn't even know. But it's...sweet. It's...Mikey's blushing and turning away and suddenly Frankie's _really_ fed up with Mikeyway not letting him get close. So he grabs Mikey's chin and kisses him properly. And after that he...

It's almost like Frankie forgets, or maybe like there're two Frankies. There's the one who works with Gee's gang and laughs and has old ladies nod at him in the street and not sidle away in fear and who gets Mikeyway's long arms wrapped around his body at night, and then there's Frankie Cools who has two cell phones and calls in tips to his mob boss so he can move the product from his Meth labs before Gee can blow them up. Yeah, two Frankies and never the twain shall meet. Until one day Frankie Cools calls it in that the Brothers Way are buying warehouse blueprints for what might be Bert's latest depot from a local agency. He gets all the way back to his place, just getting started on washing the dishes Mikey ate breakfast off that morning, before he realizes what he's just done.

After that, it's just waiting for the call, and when it comes, it's the Gee who fondled Frankie's bruised ribs and not the one who drank his ma's coffee. There's no mention of Mikey, but Frankie can hear whimpering down the line. But Gee doesn't say word one about his little brother, that's how Frankie knows he's the dumbest, lowest man alive. He snaps the phone shut and _runs_ all the way to Koslowski's bar.

Ray's there (and when did Toro become Ray?) and fucking' Matt's there looking green and Bob is taking Frankie by the elbow and showing in the back room the bootleggers used to unload their shipments in the twenties. Gee's back there, pulled up to a table Mikey's laid out on.

Mikey's shot--once in the arm and twice in the leg--and they can't take him to the hospital because they have to report gunshots. So Gee's called in a guy he knows from AA, a doctor who lost his license named Brian Schector who comes and swears a lot, but cleans up and takes the bullets out and Mikey wakes up mid-bullet extraction and starts _moaning_ and _crying_ and Frankie can't take it. Doesn't know whether to go forward, or run away, but then Mikey screams when Brian has to dig for the final bullet and Frankie bolts to the table. He grabs Mikey's head and kisses him, closing his eyes because blood is _everywhere_ and he did this. He did this. He did this to Mikey.

But Mikey lives! And all Brian asks in payment is a hamburger, well done, and Gee's so happy he's crying and Ray's grinning like a loon, and Matt's passed out at the bar and suddenly Bob's in the room, taking Gee by the elbow for a talk outside. And Frankie gets up on the table, even though it's sort of...sticky, and holds Mikey while Mikey mumbles his drugged out passage into the land of unconsciousness. He falls asleep like that.

And then he wakes up. And Gee wants to talk to him.

 

***

 

Ray and Gee have a funky sort of history. They knew of each other more than anything else growing up in the neighborhood, but Gee was Handsome Don's kid and Ray's dad was a Marine veteran who didn't want his only son associating with trash, so they basically didn't do much together until Ray had done his tour overseas and returned with an aversion to the military and a liking for alcohol. Around this time, Gee's reaffirming his own enjoyment of fermented beverages and so they meet up at Koslowski's one night, and Bob ends up pouring them into the back room, the one they used to hide the goods during Prohibition and where Bob keeps a cot set up.

When they wake up, they're only _mildly_ horrified to find themselves sort of...look, Ray's a cuddler okay? And Gerard's part-octopus, or something, and there was a lot of booze involved and now it's more like a hell of a lot of unsexy groaning and aspirin and Bob giving them highly amused looks before he tosses their hungover asses on the street. Eventually, it just sort of becomes this--this _thing_ they do were they go out drinking and bitch about their families and their jobs (although Ray gives more details since he's working at Guitar Center and Gerard's still running errands for his father) while they drink until Bob cuts them off and sends them off to snore on the cot together. More often than not, Gee and Ray wake up to Bob's industrial strength coffee, which they drink while watching Bob—who lives above stairs—set up the bar for the day. It's…oddly soothing.

This is sort of Ray's Rebellion, really, making nice not only with a Way, but with _Gerard_ Way--the Halloween Prince himself who's supposed to eat children and worship the devil...or maybe it was eat the devil and worship children, Ray's a little vague these days. Ray figures he'll get embroiled in a bar fight, maybe some low profile crime, and stick it to the old man for trying to make him into a carbon copy. And sure, sometimes he and Gee get in fights at Koslowski's, but that's usually over whose turn it is to sit on the stool facing the back wall mirror, so they can watch Bob bend over for supplies, or why IPA is the worst beer ever invented by man.

The only _real_ fight he and Gee get into, they're on the same side, because one night Gee kisses Martin Scalieri's youngest boy and never calls him back and so the family's feeling a little bruised, but that...wasn't really what Ray figured he'd ever get into a fight about. And, actually. his Rebellion is more...not? Because Gee's a dorky guy who likes Pall Malls and whiskey and drawing portraits on napkins when he thinks no one looks which he always loses or destroys by the end of the night (actually Bob saves them when Gee's not looking, snatching them away and piling them up neatly in a folder he keeps in his apartment.) After awhile, through the alcoholic haze they start to realize neither of them were ever actually _happy_ with what they grew up to do. Ray likes boys, likes playing guitar, _liked not knowing 12 different ways to kill someone with a spoon_, and pretty much came out of the Marines with a wish to grow his curls out as big as would let him get through a door and make fireworks or something. He has a skill, he figures, and at least when you blow fireworks up if people get hurt it's an accident.

And Gee's doing his job because if he didn't it'd probably fall to Mikey to do his job and that just isn't ever going to happen. Mikey's not soft, but he's not tough in the way that Gee or Ray or, hell, even Bob are tough. Mikey's a bit of a brawler when he has to be, but mostly he wants to sit back and play his records and just...play music. He might make a good DJ if half the music he ever put on the player didn't have the words, 'revenge,' 'death,' and/or 'thrill kill' in the title. Violent music for a man who stands on chairs at the threat of a mouse in the kitchen. Gee would find it amusing, but since he's been drunk for about two years and counting he finds it _hilarious_.

Anyway, somewhere along the way, Ray and Gee wind up falling asleep on each other when Bob _doesn't_ have to pour them into the backroom's cot, waking up in Gee's bed in the Way house because Koslowski's Bar is closer to the Way's than any place else and Ray can't actually remember where his house is some nights. And his parents always give him a hard time whenever he comes home anyway, so really Gee's house is the best place for him. While Mrs. Way isn't exactly thrilled to pieces that her oldest son is bringing that odd little boy from down the street home with him five nights out of seven, she warms up to Ray because, when not drunk, he's warm and funny and has this lovely habit of standing whenever she enters the room.

Gee thinks it's the funniest thing ever, and even funnier when Mikey starts going down on one knee and kissing Gee's hand when HE enters the room (of course, they don't do that around Mr. Way, because that means something far, far different in that context.) Eventually everybody just sort of...gets used to Ray being the second drunk in the house, the one less likely to knock over a lamp, but twice as likely to walk into a closed door. Gee's parents just hope Ray's enough to look out for Gee when he's stumbling around drunk and Mikey, while a little jealous, is secretly happy for the increased music!geek ratio in the house. Sooner than later, Ray's sitting at the dinner table and Ma asks him to pass Dad the potatoes, and Ray realizes he's been adopted with his own place at the dinner table and a toothbrush next to Gee's in the bathroom (Ray uses his more. He's working on that.)

So, he gets up on his free day (he's been sleeping! With Gee! WHY HASN'T HE NOTICED THIS BEFORE?) and goes back to _his_ house, where he hasn't slept in…Jesus, a _month_? He walks up the drive, eyes on the dirty tops of his service boots. None of his civilian shoes fit him anymore, they feel too flimsy and loose.

He opens the screen door, unlocks the inner door and steps inside. His parents are sitting in the living room, and Mr. and Mrs. Toro are...displeased. Their son has left the Corps, gotten a job selling guitars to 13 year olds, drunk his paychecks away and is now living in _sin_ with the neighborhood psycho. Ray's lucky they didn't have the priest over for an exorcism. As it is, Father Carter was just in the area.

So an awkward, tearful shouting match ensues, with Ray saying he's happy, he's...hanging out with Gee and he's happier than he's been since the day he got his discharge papers and then there's possibly some screaming and carrying on and then the long story short is Ray gets to choose staying with his folks and going to church to pray for his sins (they don't believe the 'sleeping with Gee' part is _at all_ platonic), or he can cut all ties. And Ray looks around at the home he grew up in, with the people who will only love him (he feels) if he gives up all the little pieces of self he's managed to hold on to through boot camp and service and just plain growing up. And suddenly he's walking down the street with no memory of getting up off his parents' couch. He…why did he do that? Why did he just chuck his entire family, his _mother_ for a drinking buddy?

He walks back to Gee's house and opens the door (he has a key, he realizes. Gee gave him a key so he'd have a place to crash if he ever got drunk alone and needed a place) and for a wonder, Gee's home in the middle of the day.

"I just got kicked--I..." Ray says, staring at Gee's wrecked black hair, his funny smile and the way he's cleaning a Glock in the middle of the living room while Ma watches her stories next to him.

Ray looks at Gee, watches as Gee puts his pistol down carefully and walks forward. Gee rests his hands on Ray's shoulders and kisses him once on the mouth. He tastes like cherry candy, like the ones in Ma's secret stash.

"How about I make everybody something to eat," Ma says, and rubs her hand downs Ray's back as she walks by.

Ray puts his head on Gee's shoulder and thinks, "Oh, so that's why."

After that, Ray just keeps working at Guitar Center. He watches Gee get drunker and, suddenly, higher and they're together, which is good, but Ray's getting steadily _not_ so much drunk as Gee steadily leaves sobriety behind. He needs looking after, he needs someone to pick him up off the ground when he falls, and Ray can't do that if he's down on the floor too. Mikey's too skinny to pick them both up.

It's like Gee just can't stop. Can't or won't, and it's killing Ray just like it's killing Ma and Mikey and even Mr. Way (although not so much there. Handsome Don figures a little lost piece of mind is the cost of doing business). So he keeps going to Koslowski's with Gee, always making sure he drinks less than Gerard so Ray can watch out for him. He starts packing his old service pistol because it just...it seems like the thing to do (which Mikey totally understands and shows Ray the gun Gee bought Mikey for his 11th birthday after the first time Gee had to kill a man. Mikey carries it everywhere, even though most days people don't quite know who he is.) And because Gee's drunk he's not much of a conversationalist and so Ray starts talking to Bob the Bartender instead of just ogling his ass.

Good Ol' Bob Bryar, as Gee calls him--usually just before he becomes incoherent--is quiet and bulky, more with muscle than fat, like a farm boy. Only he's never been on a farm, Ray finds out when he makes the comment one night, and also, Bob remarks, men with hickeys on their necks shouldn't make jokes about haystacks. Ray's hands fly to his neck even though it's winter and he's wearing Gee's scarf and no _way_ did Bryar see, and then Ray looks up and Bob's smiling down at the bar, wiping up a spill. Ray doesn't know whether to punch him or collapse into the ground in embarassment, so he throws his napkins at Bob instead, laughing for the first time it feels like in weeks.

After that, Ray just starts talking to Bob about everything, all the time, and because Ray talks to Bob then Gee talks to Bob which sets Mikey off and suddenly Bob's their third musketeer, switching off Gee-Watching duties. They all three of them love music, and Mikey is absolutely fascinated that Bob used to do front of house sound for The House of Blues in Chicago. They learn that Bob's boyfriend, Patrick Stump, and his boyfriend's band came up to NY for a gig with Bob to do sound and decided to stay to record, but then his boyfriend realized that he'd been in love with his bassist for _years_. Gee, maybe a little too seriously offers to kill the bassist, but Bob assures him that there's no hard feelings. Sure, he's tending bar in New Jersey and doing the occasional bit for the local hardcore scene while Patrick and Pete are off being co-dependent and in love around the US…but Bob's not bitter.

Which--Ray realizes--is a shame, because Bob should be bitter. Bob uprooted his life for a guy who left him at the studio, or whatever, and now he's tending bar and teching for shitty bands because this Pete guy is EVERYWHERE in Chicago and Bob figured he didn't need the static. Bob is a saint. Bob is a broad-shoulder, charming smiled saint and he deserves a fuck-load better than what he got. And he tells Bob this. Loudly. It's possible he also says this drunkenly while hanging off Bob's shoulder on the way to the backroom again. (Hey, Ray hasn't _quit_ drinking, he's just stopped working his way through the Alcohol A-Z Poster his squad gave him as a going away present.) It's also possible that Gee seconded this statement while listing off Mikey's arm and ending on "and you've got a great ass."

Next morning at the Way/Toro house is a little tense. Mikey doesn't know if he should smack Gee and Ray (who aren't speaking much to each other and appear to be communicating solely by blushing. And throwing bottles of asprin.) or get Bob to come over and talk about the sanctity of a bartender's ass, or something. So he puts some Joy Division in his cd player, slips on his headphones and pretends he knows how to play bass instead.

Eventually, Gee and Ray get tired of drinking at home and also of Ma banging pots in the kitchen all fucking morning when she sees the mess they make when drunk in the kitchen. So they go back to the bar and Gee drinks way too much because of the nerves, but Bob's there and he's the same good, solid man that everyone overlooks until they need him and then forgets when they don't. Only this time Ray makes an effort not to forget, because Gee's getting worse as his dad gets older and frailer and starts talking about his legacy. Currently, his legacy is some really scenic areas to dump bodies, an easy in to Bert McCracken's drug supply, and a bunch of guys who walk with canes because Gee kneecapped them. Good times.

Suddenly, everything's tense and quiet. Handsome Don takes longer every day to get out of bed and Gee doesn't come to bed at all anymore. So Ray goes looking for him, night after night following Gee to jobs and trying to hide all these pills he finds and it's tough. He hasn't slept and Mikey isn't sleeping either because if Ray gets to go then so does Mikey so they're seeing parts of Gee he _never_ wanted them to see, the Halloween Prince, the guy Mr. Way sends to hurt and scare and collect debts. Some nights Ray, Mikey, and Bob lose Gee while following him, and then Mikey and Ray drink all of Bob's coffee in his apartment, trying to stay awake and staring at their cell phones, just waiting for Gee to call…or stumble down the street or _anything_. Bob's very neat, and Ray kind of gets in the habit of futzing with his stuff to get a rise out of Bob, and during one of those 'rearrange Bob's couch pillow' moments, Ray finds the folder with all of Gee's napkin drawings in it. He looks up and through to the kitchen area, where Bob and Mikey are talking around the table. Bob rubs the back of Mikey's neck, his large hand curling at Mikey's nape protectively. Ray puts the folder back exactly where he found it.

It just gets worse. Handsome Don gets a little paranoid one week, and sends Gee out at all hours to roust his 'employees' and make sure everyone knows who's in charge. No one can keep up, and finally Gee-Watching falls all to pieces. Ray lays awake all night in their bed, waiting for Gee to come home, and thinking about all the ways a human body can die. And Ray should know, he's the combat veteran.

Booze, pills, it's all six of one and half a dozen of something round and blue. At that point, it gets so bad Gee has a freak out on acid and wakes up with shorn hair, dyed whiter than chalk, and doesn't remember what happened, or where he was, but when he gets back home and pushes Ray off so he can clean up, there's lipstick on his inner thigh.

Gee stands there in the shower, water pouring down on his head and begins to scrub, working his way through his soap and his ma's and that shit Mikey uses on his pimples. He scrubs until his skin is red and stinging from the now frigid water and it still isn't enough because he doesn't remember and he--he could _have something_ now, something wrong with him because he doesn't know what he did or who--he gags and puts his hand on the shower wall for balance, but it's no help. Nausea hits and suddenly Gee's vomiting onto his feet, thick yellow bile that burns as it churns up his throat.

Eventually, Ray comes for him, the way Ray always seems to, and pulls him out of the water. He dries Gee off and puts him to bed, wrapping his arms around Gee's stomach and throwing a leg over Gee's. And Gee can't take it. He closes his eyes and tells him everything. He tells Ray, that he doesn't know about where he's been, or…or _who_ he's been with, and all the time he's just waiting for Ray to pull away and leave him and maybe tell Mikey so Mikey'll know _exactly_ what kind of fuck up his older brother is, down to the last atom, and maybe it's better that way. Better that everyone knows just how horrible and bad Gerard Way truly is, maybe he should just go off and die and let Ray get together with Bob because he's seen how Bob looks at Ray and how Ray laughs and smiles when Bob's there and it'd be better. So much better. Only Ray doesn't pull away and eventually it's just Gee and Ray, shivering on the bed. Gee falls asleep and wakes up in exactly the same position he fell asleep in. He feels awful, mouth like a graveyard and claws stripping his nerve endings to raw, bloody shreds. He wants a drink and a hit in exactly that order and he gets up, sitting up in the bed and looks at his shaking hands.

"What's up?" Ray mutters. (He's been a light sleeper since boot camp.)

"I...feel like getting drunk," Gee says.

"...oh."

Gee looks behind him, turns to face Ray with his crazy hair flopping over the pillow and wishes he could see Ray's goofy smile again. Ray puts his hand on Gee's knee and Gee shivers. He lays back down and curls into Ray.

"Yeah, I think...I...I don't think I want to do this anymore," Gee says.

"Yeah?" Ray asks, cautious.

"Yeah," Gee says. "I'm not this person. I'm quitting."

Ray kisses the top of his head and tries to believe him, because Gee's said he'll quit, or he'll slow down, or cut back so many times he and Mikey have a morbid little bet as to what excuse Gee'll use next. Bob keeps score.

Funny enough, it sticks. Whatever it was, the bad trip, the haircut, the lipstick (and wasn't THAT fun, taking Gee down to the free clinic to get tested.) or just Gee reaching his limit, but it sticks. He's shakes, puking his guts out at the slightest provocation. He smokes every cigarette in the house, but he gets clean, going to AA, and talking to his cousin, Greta, who does the headshrinking in the city. Gee gets better and better and finally they all go to Koslowski's because Gee's got something to prove and he and Ray have been talking in between Gee's prayers to the porcelain god and They Have a Plan. Which Gee promptly ruins by manhandling Bob into the backroom and kissing the bejesus out of him while Ray watches, shaking his head.

Bob, of course, is understandably startled and (hey! turned on, he's _human_ and Gerard's hair is kind of cool after you get used to it) looks at Ray. And Ray explains that they really like him and he's been there when they needed him for Gee Dragnets and late night talks and places to sleep, etc. and, well, he's hot like a motherfucker, so pucker up, Bryar, and enjoy the sex.

And, really, it was sort of supposed to be a one off thing, because Gee and Ray are rather traditional that way, but it's just habit to go to Koslowski's and shoot the shit with Bob (who gives Gee sodas and, occasionally O'Douls if Gee's really hurting for the taste) and he's sweet and funny and _there_, completely there when you need him. It's...it's like having one safe place in the entire world, and Bob's standing right in the center, ready to kick your ass if you don't get with the program, which is a novel experience for both Gee and Ray and it's BOB. So Gee and Ray becomes Gee and Ray and Bob, while Mikey bobs his head in the background and learns to knock before entering bedrooms.

 

***

 

It's a funny thing, but Mikey Way has always associated love with terror. When he was a kid, he had routes: one for school, one for church, and one to his dad's office if he ever actually had to go there (which no one really let him do). The routes weren't straightforward, they twisted and curved, down some alleys and never others, past storefronts where grown men ducked out of view when Mikey's dad walked by, or sent their sons to shove envelopes into Mr. Way's hands. Mikey had places he could go and places he couldn't and some weeks he couldn't go anywhere.

It's because he's the youngest and the smallest, the one with the shy smile and bedroom eyes (that's what Mary Alice Hancock said in sixth grade anyway, but she was kind of weird), but it sometimes feels like the less he knows about what Dad and Gee do, the better off he and Ma will be. Except of course he knows what Dad and Gee do, because he's not stupid. He's just scared.

Some days--most days--it was just Mikey and Ma watching the tv and making up stories about the neighbors who never came over when Dad was home. Mikey and Ma and Gerard, who snuck into Mikey's room and drew him nighttime stories, covered his walls in pictures of the X-Men, and London, and the New York skyline from the part of the island Mikey wasn't allowed into. Outside the house was cold, was full of traps and gangs of men who'd shot at Mikey on his way back from school when he was nine. Outside the house made Ma nervous and Gerard _cold_, made his older brother stalk like the tigers in the zoo, hands at his sides and eyes everywhere at once. Mikey didn't like the outside, didn't like the people who looked at him like they knew him, the way Dad stopped laughing at the edge of the door, or the way Ma never talked about what Gee and Dad did unless she and Mikey went along too. So, for most of his childhood, Mikey practiced the fine art of disappearing.

If Gee asked him to, Mikey would do anything. He loves Ma and Dad, loves his grandparents, but if Gee asked Mikey to choose it'd be Gee all the time and twice on Sundays. Gerard looks after Mikey, makes him safe, stretches out his hand and knocks whatever obstacles there are in Mikey's path out of the way. Not that there are many, it's just that Mikey has always had that sort of support at his back, knows it even when he can't _feel_ it, even when Gee's stoned out of his mind and (once) trying to grope him like a girl. For his eleventh birthday Gee bought him a cd player and a gun, then went out all night and came back smelling like a distillery.

"You're such a good kid, Mikey," Gee said, and his voice puffed out of him on a wave of booze. "Keep that in your pocket, okay? I'm gonna--you don't gotta use it, but just...I'm gonna throw up."

He did, right there on the kitchen floor and Mikey put Gee to bed before cleaning up the mess. He's Mikey and that's Gee and even though Gee can't let Mikey help him all the time, Mikey can make sure his brother is taken care of. By the time Mikey is seventeen, the outside has almost forgotten he existed in the first place, thinks of him less as Mikey Way and just as plain ol' Mikeyway, the kid with the glasses and the headphones and only later on, if someone maybe thought they could get fresh with Mikey did it become "_Jesus_ don't look at him or his brother'll get you, don't you know? That's Handsome Don's boy, that's Gerard Way's younger brother." And Mikeyway was cool with being forgotten. It was nicer in his room, anyway.

It changes, of course, when Gee meets up with Ray. And then Bob. And, fuck, it's not like Mikey wants either of them, but...his girls don't stay and the boys who like Mikey aren't the type to stick around. Mikey's too much inside his head, too used to not being noticed (and too used to ENJOYING the anonymity) and then suddenly, Handsome Don Way does the unthinkable. He dies in his sleep, in his own bed.

For a few weeks, there's nothing but Mikey's music, headphones blasting The Misfits into his ears until his head rings with the sound. He watches Ma cry in the kitchen, watches his relatives descend on to the house like crows, watches Gee stop eating, stop sleeping, sit up nights in the kitchen with Ray by his elbow and Bob across the table staring at a bottle of whiskey like it holds the secret to the universe while Mikey makes him toast Gee never touches. He can't hear, he can't feel, his father's dead and his mother is crying and Gee's next in line. He knows it and Gerard knows it and so does the whole goddamned neighborhood craning its neck over the fence to see the Halloween Prince take his throne, take over his dad's operation, maybe worse, maybe better. Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss. And now Mikey's the prince. He feels his hands shake, his muscles spasm, throwing cds at the wall to crack against the paint. It's him and Gee now, no more painting, no more music, nothing but going _outside_ and taking care of business.

The day of the funeral, Mikey's cd player dies in the car while following the hearse. He doesn't have any batteries, nothing but static and a dull throb. He looks around, digging through his pockets frantically and Ma just watches him, twisting a handkerchief in her gloved hands. It's Gee who pulls the useless headphones off his head, Gee who pulls him off the seat and into his lap, sets Mikey's feet over Ray's thighs, and cuddles Mikey like a fucking baby--like he _needs_ to be cuddled or something, which isn't true. He's just. Fucking. Fine. He's not even crying, just...the window's open and maybe some rain is getting on Gee's collar, is all.

The service isn't quick. It drags on and on and Mikey starts to shake halfway through, staring at his lap because his _father_ is in a _coffin_ in front of him and it's not fair. It's not fair, none of this is _fair_. He starts to get up and Bob, who's sitting as close to the family as possible in the pew just behind Mikey and Ray, pulls on Mikey's suit jacket until he's flush against the pew. Without looking, Ray puts his hand on Mikey's shoulder and when the time comes to go out to the graveyard, Gee takes hold of their mother and Ray and Bob take hold of Mikey.

Afterwards it's quiet, very, very quiet. Gee just sits in the living room, smoking, and staring out into space until one night Mikey goes to bed and wakes up with Gee sitting next to him, still staring. The tip of his cigarette flares red with every inhale. Mikey sits up, rubbing his eyes and says, "Gee? Is there...what's going on?" And he's thinking someone's broken in, or Ma's died of a broken heart (though he figures if she could she would have done so before this. And Gee has never looked so _little_ like his older brother in this moment, not even the times Mikey watched him hurt people, watched him shoot other men on the orders of his father. Gerard Way has _never_ looked less like the Gerard Way Mikey knows than at this moment.

"You're not gonna be me," Gee says. "I love you too much for that."

Two days later, Bob has moved into the Way house (Ma is...she gets used to it. Ray was fine, Ray's family, but TWO MEN at once, Gee? That's not how she raised her boys.) and Ray's gotten Gee to make bullet points. Slowly, the word gets out that The Way Family is no longer open for criminal business, and that the Halloween Prince is having MUCH more fun hunting his own kind, rather than living off the backs of gamblers, addicts, and protection rackets.

 

***

 

The Watch, as Mikey starts calling it, doesn't get off the ground all the easily. Nobody outside trusts Gee, all they see is Handsome Don's boy making a grab for more territory, and it continues that way until Ray (who'd helped with the planning and everything, but flatly _refused_ to have anything to do with violence.) finally turns up at the planning table with a handful of wires and a brick of grey putty and says, "this is the last time you (Gee) or Mikey are comin' back home wounded. I won't stand for it) and from then on it's Ray and Mikey and Gee, shutting down labs and running crooks out of their boltholes. It's tough, it's almost impossible and Mikey's _outside_. He's at Gee's shoulder, one hand on his holster at all times, watching Gee's back. And it's nothing like walking with Dad, nothing like that cloying, drenching fear of being _Noticed_ with Gee. Mikey _wants_ this, he wants to be here making a difference in people's lives, showing them that they _don't_ need to be scared, that their children can play outside and The Watch will have taken care of all the bodies or the needles. That some places are safe and some places are _going_ to be safe and that'll never change.

Mikey doesn't think he's ever felt more..._more_ in his entire life, and he has Gee to thank for it. He and Ray and Matt (who came in when they needed another guy for back up because Ray wasn't gonna do it yet) and Bob and Gee all working together, everybody with their roles, sitting around the kitchen table with Ma at dinner like a gang, like a family. Things build up in the Watch, the plans get bigger, more intense, Ray and Gee and Bob all working together make Mikey feel almost like he's watching it all happen. They have this connection--this drive—but Ray never lets Mikey feel left out. Even when Gee's at his most menacing, Ray's there to back him up so Mikey can calm him down. They work as a team and if Mikey feels a little alone, he's not going to begrudge his brother _Ray Toro_. He loves Ray like he was a brother (which is a little creepy if he extrapolates, so...Mikey doesn't.)

The day Gee decides they need a guy with a more current bead on underworld activity and invites Frank Iero (Frankie Cools, a voice whispers inside Mikey's head, the guy who threw Adam Lazarra out a nine story window and then went down stairs to kick the corpse) is an off day for Mikey. The guy he'd found through his a/v club (music geek! GENERAL RECRUITMENT OF THE GEEK FORCES!) who made plastic explosives in his spare time had suddenly 'taken a vacation' in a federal sort of way, and so Mikey's been scrambling to find Ray a new source. It's not that Mikey knows more people than Ray or Gee, or even Matt, it's just that people are far less frightened of Mikey than they are of Gee, more likely to look the other way when Mikey buys fireworks for their gunpowder, and Matt...knows people of substandard reliability.

So, basically, Mikey Way is now The Watch Supply Master whether he wanted it, or not. Which is cool, because when he finds the really hard stuff everybody gets this proud look on their faces (everybody being the four people in his life who matter--who all live in his house and are mostly related to him) and it's nice. He's needed. But anyway, the first time Mikeyway meets Frankie Cools, he's not all that happy. In fact, he's pretty distracted and...all right, so maybe he didn't know that Frankie was hot like a house afire before they met, or that he had these tattoos on his knuckles and his neck and it made Mikey want to know where else he might have tattoos. So what? Guy wasn't here for Mikey to look at. He was here to help The Watch kick ass and erase names. (Mikey has a rather elastic sense of morality, possibly even more so than Gee, and _certainly_ more so than Ray or Bob. Matt, on the other hand, is just sleazy.)

Except apparently no one told Frankie he was just the hired help, and suddenly he's _everywhere_. Tagging along with Gee and Ray to Koslowski's, walking around with Matt at weird hours, making friends with Bob and EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. He's sitting, or standing, or walking, or JUMPING ON Mikey. Every time. He's looking at Mikey, tongue playing with his lip ring, or putting his hands on Mikey, not...it's not bad touching, it's just...it's casual and warm, like Frankie's got so much energy even his skin generates it. One day, Mikey runs into Frankie at a music store, hovering over the Misfits and Frankie gets Mikey talking. He worms an invitation to dinner and a look at Mikey's music collection and suddenly Frankie's everywhere again, but closer now. He's lying on Mikey's floor, stretched out in t-shirts that ride up over his belly, showing off the back feathers of two sparrow tattoos on his stomach and Mikey has to stop himself from leaning over to trace the images with his tongue.

After they finally get it together (and really, by this point no one was very surprised at the outcome, even if no one--except possibly Matt--knew the motivation behind it) Mikey doesn't even have a word for what it feels like to be with Frankie. No one's ever _Noticed_ Mikey like this before, with this light in their eyes as if Frankie's been waiting all day just hear Mikey's footsteps on the sidewalk. They talk about music, they talk about movies, Mikey meets Frankie's mom and it's not awkward at all. No one says they're wrong together, or that it'll end badly, or that Frankie's using him to get to Gee (which would signify girlfriends 1-4) because it's not true. Frankie's kiss is too good for that, the way he sleeps curled up next to Mikey, holding on like Mikey's his only anchor. Frankie _cares_, he notices, and he sees, and he pulls Mikey out of his head when he needs the help.

Bert McCracken's a problem. He and Gee used to be pals, or rather, he and Gee used to take a lot of drugs together and then shoot their guns at lighted windows (this is more Bert than Gee, but he was there.) He hasn't taken too well to Gee new lease on life and The Watch have been feeling the heat. Every time they make a play for him, Bert just slips out a second too fast. Gee's frustrated, Ray's frustrated, Matt's nervous--a lot nervous, it's weird--and Frankie's at his wit's end trying to figure out Bert's next play. Finally, one of Mikey's new friends in the city Planning Office phones in that they've got new blueprints of some dockside warehouses, ones owned by McCracken fronted business. Mikey tells Frankie as they're eating breakfast, but Frankie, for all the hyperactivity, isn't at his best in the mornings, so Mikey isn't all that sure if he heard or not. He kisses Frankie good bye as he leaves, sliding into Frankie's lap and holding him close to make it a proper kiss.

He and Gee make good time to the office, Gee goes first through the door and Mikey follows. This saves Gerard's life, because it's _Mikey_ who sees Jepha Howard coming out of the next doorway, already raising his gun, and Mikey knows just what to do. He draws his own pistol, shoving Gerard through the door and falling forward as Jepha starts firing.

 

***

 

The first thing Frankie sees when he wakes up is Mikey's face, pale and tense with dried blood sprayed across his forehead. He closes his eyes again and puts his head on Mikey's shoulder, because if his eyes are closed then Frankie's asleep, and if he's asleep then he never called Bert and Mikey never got hurt and it wasn't ever Frankie's fault. He takes a deep breath and the taste of blood, thick and metallic, hits the back of his throat.

He coughs, eyes flying open, and rolls off the table, smacking onto the floor. His hands come up wet. He looks, already wincing, but it's only floor cleanser—Bob, probably, since it's his boss' backroom.

"Shh," Ray says. "You'll wake up Mikey."

Frank stops moving, stops breathing, because he never even noticed Ray in the room, didn't notice anything but Mikey and how his breath hitched in pain as he slept. He hears Ray's footsteps cross the floor, the deliberate rise and smack of metal-tipped boots against old wood. The boots stop at Frankie's ankle, then Ray squats down, crossing his arms on his knees.

"How you holding up?" he asks, mild as milk.

Frankie's hands begin to shake. He bits his lip, drags in a stuttering breath and can't hold it, the air escapes just as quickly as it comes, taking more air with it as it leaves his chest. Frankie scrambles for more, opening his mouth as wide as he can get it, but the shaking in his hands travels up his arms to his chest and it just won't _stop_. Ray puts his hands to either side of Frankie's head, cups his palms over Frankie's cheeks.

"Not like that, Frankie," he says. "Breathe how I breathe, okay? Just like me, watch."

And Ray gets down on his knees to straddle Frankie's useless legs, tilting Frankie's head so he can watch Ray. Frankie stares at Ray's mouth as air rushes in, then out, in, and then out. He feels the shaking lessen, the constriction around his lungs loosening every time he finds Ray's rhythm until he can hold it down on his own. Ray's mouth closes as he stands, hands falling from Frankie's face.

"All right," he says, and suddenly his eyes dim, the lines of his face tensing sternly. "You come with me now. Gee wants to see you."

Frankie's mouth clamps shut, threatens to close off all the air once again, but this time he gets a hold of himself. He's been doing this so long, acting like he isn't scared of talking to Gee, as if the man can smell a lie when he's already swallowed a thousand, that it's second nature to make himself performance ready—so ready, in fact, that sometimes he forgot and caught hell from Bert during the next phone call. ("Always for Mikey," a small voice in his head whispers, "always because Gee thought he could trust the man holding Mikey's heart.")

Nobody knows. No one knows what he did, and if nobody knows what he did than he can make up for it. He can—he can make up for almost killing his Mikey. Everybody trips up once and awhile, right? It's not—nobody knows.

Except, maybe, Matt.

The muscles in his back lock in place, even as he takes Ray's hand and stands on his own two feet. Behind him, Mikey coughs, makes a distressed sound and Frankie turns, but Ray's there again, one arm blocking him from going back to the table.

"Brian'll look after him," he says. "Don't keep Gee waiting."

Frankie nods, watching the rise and fall of Mikey's chest.

Outside in the bar, Ray leads Frankie to the Watch's usual booth. Koslowski's should be open—it's the middle of the day—but there's nobody in the place but the Watch. A group of regulars walk by the large window pane in the front, look in, and then start walking away very quickly when Bob looks up briefly and shakes his head. Bob's at table nearby, mopping up a spill with a rag next to Matt, who's slumped over in his chair, very obviously unconscious. Ray puts his hand on Frankie's back, wide fingers pressing in hard to propel him nearer to where Gee's sitting.

Frankie falls more than sits down into the booth, prodded by Ray until he's sitting next to Gee. He looks up only to see Ray turning his back and lean on the side of the booth, arms crossed.

"Heya Frankie," Gee says.

He's sprawled out at the back corner of the booth, a glass of dark liquid sloshing in his hand as he takes a sip. He plops the glass on the table. His head falls forward even as he's tilting it in Frankie's direction, the gentlest, most charming smile Frankie's ever seen sliding across Gee's face. Everyone's being so nice, and it's all Frankie can do to not make a break for the door. That, and the knowledge he probably wouldn't reach the door before someone shot him.

He never crossed paths with Gee when they were (really) in the same line of work, but he's heard the stories. He'd seen the flash of a black coat leaving a doorway, seen mud-splattered boots lying next to Bert's in the office and known it was time to lay low for a week until the circus left town. He's been to gambling halls in basements that shut _down_ when a runner tells them Gee's in the area. Frankie's never really had the chance to experience the Halloween Prince, but he's always been a believer.

But it's the man who turned his life around on a dime to make sure Mikeyway never became him that Frankie's really worried about.

That's not alcohol, Frankie tells himself. Gee's not going to get drunk and neither Ray nor Bob would ever let him get drunk and so Gee's not drinking himself back into an early grave on account of almost losing his little brother. Frankie swallows and nods tightly.

Gee leans forward, smooth and quick, wrapping a gloved hand around Frankie's shoulders and pulling him tightly to Gee's body. "Would you do me a favor, Frankie?" he asks, lips skimming Frankie's cheek.

Frankie's throat constricts, suddenly dry. He coughs to clear it, and Gee kisses his cheek. He reaches between them, into his jacket and holds a pistol flat against Frankie's stomach. The cold metal freezes Frankie's skin, Gee's placed it exactly over one of the sparrow tattoos, and it's like the bird's come to life. He feels something scrabbling in his stomach, trying to break free.

"Could you kill Matt for me?" Gee says.

The pistol drops into Frankie's lap as Gee reaches up to grip the side of Frankie's neck. His gloved hand squeezes once, there's another kiss placed delicately on his cheek, and Frankie can't help it. His head whips around to look outside the booth. Ray's still got his back to them, but he's not blocking the view at all. Matt's still unconscious at the table, just starting to snore. Bob's stopped wiping up and he's…he's _watching_ Gee grope Frankie in the back of the booth with a blank look on his face. His hands are clasped over his stomach as he leans against Matt's table. Ray can hear them, Frankie's sure of it, he can hear the way Frankie's breath has started to come in bursts and Gee just won't stop _touching_ him.

"He's always been a talkative drunk, you know?" Gee says.

He reaches back to the table, grabbing his drink, and taking a sip. The liquid sloshes and Frankie wishes he could smell it, wishes he knew what it was. Bert has _stories_ about 'That Fucking Turncoat' back when he and Gee took drugs together. Gee replaces the glass on the table and continues,

"Now, he hasn't been drinking so much these days, which I figured was a very nice turn of events since he can be a bitch to carry home, but today's _special_ isn't it?"

Gee's voice snaps, as his fingers spasm on Frankie's shoulder. Frankie swallows, shakes his head and he still can't bring himself to speak. If he talks he's gonna tell Gee _everything,_ he just knows it, if only to get out of the booth and back to—no, if he talks to Gee, he's not gonna see Mikey again. Ever.

Frankie nods. Bob walks over to the booth, leans on the other side like Ray, only facing in.

"I gave him the bottle," Bob says. "I figured he needed it."

On reflex, Frankie glances at Gee's drink. The gun weighs heavy in his lap, not once warming up from Frankie's body heat. He keeps both hands on the table, and takes a deep breath when Gee _finally_ moves away.

"So now we know," Gee says, voice frosting over so fast it turns Frankie's blood to ice. "I'll just be waiting here, okay? Bob's got a mop."

And, with that, Gee sprawls out in the booth, moving to the side nearest to Bob, and letting Frankie go without looking at him. He picks up his glass and takes a drink.

"Any time you're ready," he says, and Frankie's hand falls to the gun.

It's muscle memory, automatic to curl his palm around the butt of the pistol and lay his finger along the trigger guard. The pistol is heavy and cold in Frankie's hand. He swallows, shifts in his seat, glancing from Gee to Bob to Ray and then fixates on Matt's snoring on the table.

He's a big guy, Matt, muscles turning to fat as he drinks his way through Bob's stock, but he's…he's a sleazy bastard who sold out his whole crew to pay off his gambling. Who had no problem visiting hookers even while Gee was trying to get them off the streets and into programs. He's the only man here who knows everything Frankie did.

The churning in Frankie's stomach starts to burn, shooting flares up into his throat. He takes a deep breath and holds the gun in his lap.

If he kills Matt, he'll prove himself to Gee, he'll be the go-to guy. That's how it works in every gang Frankie's ever been in, shoot a guy and make your bones with the man in charge. It's…okay, so he thought he'd found something different (which is funny, because he wasn't looking in the first place. The world was hard and cold and it didn't give a shit for a kid who'd lost his dad in a barfight and never found anything to replace him but the mob). So, maybe, he'd been buying in to what Gee was selling, but it was stupid to think Gee wasn't Handsome Don's boy where other people couldn't see. Stupid.

Frankie gets out of the booth, and Ray moves silently out of his way. The sun's shining through the window, warm on Frankie's cold, dead-fish hands as he stands in front of the booth. Matt snorts in his sleep.

If he kills Matt, it won't be the first time he's committed murder—won't even be the seventh or the twelfth. He's killed a lot of people for a lot less of a reason. He can kill Matt (right in front of the window where people can _see_) and no one will bat an eyelash because that's the price of doing business sometimes. If he kills Matt, right here in Koslowski's bar, he can go back to Mikey and take him home to bed and pull the covers over both their heads.

Frankie steps forward, feeling his head disconnect from his body. His feet keep walking forward, his hand raises the gun, but in his head all he sees is Mikey kissing his cheek, Mikey listening to music with his feet in Frankie's lap, Mikey crying on the table with blood on his face. Mikey saying good bye that morning. If he kills Matt, he can go back to Mikey.

He puts the gun up to the back of Matt's head, barrel flush against Matt's lank, brown hair. His hand starts to shake. He hears cloth rustling behind him, but it's not louder than the beating of his own heart, hammering in his chest. Something raw and barbed claws its way up his throat, he tries to swallow and can't suddenly—oh God, no, come _on_\--Frankie can't stop shaking, can't stop _talking,_

"I just want Mikey, okay?" he whispers. "I just—I can do this, and I can--then I can go back to Mikey, right? Please, I just want to go back to Mikey, I promise, I don't—I _won't_, I just want Mikey, I just want to be there when he wakes up."

He feels someone step up behind him and closes his eyes. He's gonna die, he's gonna—they _know_ and then a hand is taking the pistol from Frankie's grasp and that same someone is turning him around. Frankie opens his eyes. He's gonna die staring them all down, he's—

Gee's standing in front of him, holding the gun. He bends down and kisses Frankie's forehead.

"That's the right answer," he says.

 

[Part Two](http://missmollyetc.livejournal.com/269448.html)


	2. The Watch

Black, Gee's father once said, was the world's most perfect color. He'd said this while sitting with Gee on his knee and Baby Mikey in Ma's arms at 'Uncle' Michael Nolan's funeral. The coffin was a deep, cherry wood red and Gee remembers that it shone above his father's dark head when Handsome Don'd hoisted it up and out of the church with the other pallbearers. Later on, if Dad had ever been the kind of man who allowed backtalk, Gee could have told him that black wasn't a color at all. Black was a vortex, the decayed void into which all color, all light, was sucked into, a voracious maw clotted with mold and stinking of rotting blood. Gee should know, since he hasn't been able to get the smell out of his clothes, but he wears black anyway. Like Dad said, it hides the stains.

First time he killed a man, Gee ruined his shoes with vomit and his stomach with Ma's cooking sherry. Mikey cleaned up the mess, he thinks, and Ma never said anything about the missing liquor. Ma never said anything about a lot of things while Gee was learning the ropes.

At first it was fun, Dad had a stop watch and if Gee beat his old time by thirty seconds every day he worked his routes, then Dad took him and Mikey out for ice cream. He'd run as fast as he could, learned every short cut the neighborhood, jumping fences and skirting the Bad Places where those guys who'd put Worm's little sister in traction lived, with his pockets bulging with envelopes and a backpack stuffed with racetrack bulletins and packages he wasn't allowed to open. At seven, he'd played cops and robbers in the alley, chasing kids who never _ever_ looked him in the eye, whose mothers' pulled them inside whenever he turned the corner up the sidewalk, pretending he was running down drug dealers and--and at ten he realized he wasn't the one wearing the badge. It's hard, learning the right place to shatter someone's kneecap because you're short enough to slip under a guy's guard and Gerard had to practice many times.

Handsome Don was an oddball, really, never too particular about how his people looked as long as they upheld the terms of their employment. Gerard grew his hair long, let his shoulders slump, found the oddest clothes in Goodwill sales, and mostly stayed in his room. He read comic books and library books and started drawing on a legal pad he'd stolen from Dad's desk, superheroes mostly. People who went outside and didn't have so much to confess—or if they did, they _atoned_ for their mistakes, didn't keep going out day after night to pocket blood money and break a cheat's fingers. He'd stopped going outside the day he'd turned eleven and Alicia Santorini had crossed herself and then crossed the street when he told her she was pretty, so, so pretty with her dark curls, like a painting. Alicia's brother interned outside the neighborhood. He went to business school by day and Gee's sixth stop poker room collection at night, but Gee never told her.

It was like he'd been in a cage all his life and had only just then grown to see the bars. He was Handsome Don Way's oldest son, the heir apparent and no amount of interest in 'coloring' as Dad called it would ever come to any damn thing. He had obligations to his family, to make sure Dad and he continued to support Ma and Mikey in the way they had become accustomed. There were bills to pay, employees (thugs, Gee thought, thinking of what Batman would do to them all if Batman weren't fake) to take care of, a business to run. Everything would grind to a halt if Gee stopped helping out ("What would I do without my main guy?" Dad would say, gripping Gee's shoulder tightly. "Who else would I trust?") and if that meant hurting someone else, well then they weren't family. Every man had to have a business, and this was Gee's.

Mikey was a problem. Gee loved him to distraction and beyond into aching, frozen fear of what might happen the few times Dad took Mikey outside to walk a route. When Mikey was nine, some yahoo took a potshot at him walking home from school and Ma put her foot down. The fight was loud, louder than Gee had _ever_ heard his Ma before in his entire _life_ and Mikey, who hadn't done anything but shiver in Gee's lap since Ma and Dad had left to the kitchen for their 'discussion' started to wail. Gee took them down to his room and made a blanket fort. He piled all his blankets and pillows and sheets in the middle of the floor and brought his flashlight and sketchbook.

"Here, Mikey, Mikey, look!"

Gee clicked on the flashlight. He opened up his book and shoved the open face right in front of Mikey's hiccupping mouth, pointing with the light. Slowly, because Mikey always did what Gee said, Mikey's eyes opened, tears slipping down his cheeks. "Who's that?" he asked, mouth trembling.

"It's this guy I made up. This is the _Séance_ is he cool or what?" Gee grinned, wincing as he heard a plate crash into a wall.

_"Not my Mikey, you're not--"_

"I made him for you!" Gee said, trying to talk louder. "See? He calls _dead people_\--dead superheros--"

"Superheroes _die_?" Mikey's eyes popped and Gee shook his head.

"No! I mean, like when they get really old like Mrs. Scalieri's ma? Then they go to…well, Ma said she went to heaven, but whatever, but so the Séance? He can talk to them, so they aren't really dead, and then they give him their powers so he can fight _evil._"

Mikey started to smile. He always did after awhile, if Gee showed him something cool, and Mikey thought anything Gee had to show him was damn cool. After the fight was over, Ma kept Mikey inside and Dad took Gee out and no one talked about the time Mikey almost got shot again. Sometimes, Gee would wake up and Mikey was sleeping on his floor, but no one ever mentioned it, or why Gerard spent his off-time for a solid week painting Mikey the biggest, most elegant Ouija board on his bedroom wall.

In high school, Gee realized that wearing black made you a man, made you serious and somber and _alien_ on the outside when you felt inhuman on the inside. Freshman year a group of jocks cornered him in the locker room, laughing at his pale, pudgy body and the red scar on his upper arm where a bullet had grazed him. These…boys, athletes, children of rich and fat parents who'd never seen a man shot in the head, never had their favorite 'uncle' taken out back and disappeared for talking to the wrong people where the right ones could see, thought they could do more to Gerard Way than the neighborhood already had. Gerard shook his hair out of his eyes, and laughed. The sound, high pitched and…almost like Ma's in its gentility bounced off the tiled room. When the jocks took offense, Gee pulled his knife from his locker and cut out a few careers at the knee. He spent the rest of the year at home with Mikey, drawing pictures and reading up for the GED.

Girls came around when he started losing weight on a steady diet of cigarettes, the loudest music he could find, and the cheapest liquor. He didn't understand it, didn't get why they thought dumping Mikey for the chance to suck Gee's cock would impress him, and he pulled back as much as his body would let him. Mikey was golden, where Gee was tarnished silver and if some of that tarnish rubbed off on Mikey it never got him shot at again, so Gee counted it as a minor victory. Boys were easier anyway, and it wasn't like fucking Mr. Saporta's boy or Bert or that Branden guy Bert kept around for his entertainment value would get Gee into any trouble he couldn't handle (as long as he didn't touch Quinn. He and Bert had a weird thing there). Handsome Don didn't care who fucked what as long as it didn't interrupt _business_. The amount of times Gee'd broken the ribs of employees who'd made a play for little Michelle Nolan's skirts before she came of age amounted to a Peter Jackson trilogy.

After awhile, Gee was grateful to be outside, because inside the house was full of long silences and Bad Places, things he couldn't talk about and images he couldn't drag from his head no matter how many red crayons and pen he ruined trying to draw them in his sketchbook. He started…he found things he was good at, like scaring people. Walk back home with blood on your face and bottle of single malt in your hand and the neighborhood got the message. Snort some product and wake up next to a competitor's corpse and Dad would overlook that you were cutting into the profits from McCracken's deal a little. Drown in the blood, the feel of a pistol in your hands, the cordite stench in your nostrils and _no_ that wasn't vomit in your throat or down your shirt, and if it was, then the mess belonged to the fucker you'd been sent to collect a pound of flesh from. Gee could do anything and as long as it made people fear him enough to make business run _smoothly_ instead of the reverse, he was golden. It was like Batman, who'd made himself so frightening even the people he was trying to _help_ (the ones who should know better and—"_Jesus_ Ma stop crying, I'll go to church tomorrow, okay? I promise, it's not mine—it's fake blood, I got this friend in drama school and they're…they're learning stage fighting."). You could break Batman's arm, but he'd come back and beat you with the cast. You could tear his skin and he'd drown you in his blood. Batman was fucking crazy and people respected him for it. Gee could get behind that.

The day Bert McCracken doesn't kill him, is the day Gee puts on his blackest suit. They're his mourning clothes, his working clothes, the same jacket and pants he'd worn the day they'd put his father in the ground and the one's he wore the night he set out to save his Mikey and wound up getting him shot instead. He tugs the black leather gloves on his hands, flexing his fingers to loosen the material. His boots are snugly tied, worn at the tips, but thick soled and serviceable. He's his father's son, after all, the heir apparent. He's forgotten himself somehow, lost his identity—the very thing that kept Mikey and Ma safe—in Ray and Bob and a neighborhood's cautious approbation--in a thousand mercies that gave out the wrong impression. The smell of blood rises into his nostrils and the Halloween Prince breathes deeply.

 

***

 

Ray hates fighting. Hates it. Just because someone has a _skill_ doesn't mean it's even a good one, it's just something he can _do._ The only reason he's in the Watch at all is that it's a good cause, and he's been shot at for less. Better to die for family, he figures, better to kill for the people you love.

It only took a phone call to Bert from Frankie, telling him that Mikey was still alive, to have McCracken screaming down the line and pulling in all his guys. Ray figures not even a burned out fuck like Bert is too stupid to know what that means, and if he is such a moron, Allman probably let him know the score, because Frankie was nodding, shaking with Gee's hands on his shoulders, even as he wrote down the address Bert recalled him to.

The one concession Ray had managed was going through the door first, and he doesn't even think he'd have gotten that far if he hadn't whispered the words 'White Phosphorus' in Gerard's ear right after Gee'd put a shotgun in Bob's hands and told him to look after Mikey. He doesn't have any, but he let Gee think Mikey's source had slipped a little something extra in the last shipment of explosive anyway. Gee might be the scariest ex-con ever to walk the streets of Belleville, but Ray's the combat veteran and if anybody's going through the door it's going to be him.

Him, or Frankie. Right now Ray ain't picky, because Right Now Mikeyway, who has slept with his head on Ray's shoulder, whose mother has fed Ray from her own kitchen, and who once told Ray that the only reason he, Mikey, hadn't killed him in his sleep, was that Ray loved Gee almost as much as Mikey did…

Ray sits in the back of the loading van with his hands in his lap and shuts his eyes, shuddering.

Mikeyway is lying on a table in the back of Koslowski's bar with three more holes in him than God gave him, and it's all Frankie's fault.

But Frankie said what Gee wanted to hear back at the bar, and so Frankie's up front at the wheel, while Ray, Gee, and the favor Gee'd called in with a 'reformed' bodyguard named Worm wait in the back. (he's good at that, isn't he? Ray thinks, and wonders if Frankie sleeping on the table next to Mikey means what he wants it to mean. Mikey deserves better.)

The van rocks as Frankie takes a corner too fast and bounces off the curb. Beside him, Gee grunts and readjusts his position against the wall of the van. His pistol is in his hands, safety on because Ray made sure, but Gee keeps humming to himself, staring up at the ceiling and running his fingers up the barrel of the Glock. Ray bounces his fingers off his knees and tries not to bury his face in Gee's shoulder and _beg_ him not to get himself killed.

Ray knows what grief can do to a man, knows how much Gee loves Mikey, how easily he let Frankie into his home. The way Frankie just slipped inside the Watch like he was tailor made for them, and Ray guesses he was, guesses that the Frankie Iero he played Tekken with last Saturday was something—he doesn't know. He doesn't know what to think, who to look out for beyond Gee and Bob and he cannot think about Bob sitting by Mikey's side with a shotgun across his lap because somehow the image is _obscene._

A knot rises in Ray's throat, stiffening with every failed attempt to swallow it down. Ray shifts in his seat, knocks his shoulders against the wall of the van to knock out the pre-fight jitters. The waiting is always the worst, all the adrenaline pumping up his heart rate with no where to fucking go but out and there no one here but the guys on his side and _fuck_ Frankie straight to hell for doing this to them. They were a fucking _family_ for Christ's sake, they were—he was practically _living_ with Mikey and Ray had—Ray had…he'd…he liked him. Ray still fucking loved Frankie fucking Iero like he was his own family, and what the fuck did that say about him? What did it mean that Ray wasn't surprised Matt had fucked them over, but wanted to curl up into a ball and fucking _weep_ like a girl because Frankie was a God damned rat? He'd sat down next to Ma and—oh, fuck.

"Ma," Ray says, sitting up from the wall. "Gee, what about _Ma_? We gotta turn around and go find her before--"

Gee holds up his gun hand, barrel pointed to the ceiling. He doesn't even look at Ray, and a stone sinks into Ray's gut. He remembers this Gee.

"It's taken care of," Gee says. "Right, Worm?"

The big guy, who's got a fucking _M-60_ leaning on his knee, nods. "Brian went over to your house and took her on a date. They should be with Bob about now."

Gee smiles and Worm—what the hell kind of a name is that, anyway?—averts his eyes. "I knew you guys wouldn't let me down."

"Hey," Worm says, quietly, but steadily. "Jeannie loves you guys. She loves that cane you sent her, by the way. The maple goes with her new party dress. You're her favorite fake cousins."

Gee giggles. Ray pretends it's not the least happy laugh he's ever heard in his laugh and pulls his fro back into a ponytail with a rubber. His thigh holster is digging into him a little. He cinched the straps a little too tight because the last time he'd put it on, it'd been for Bob and Gee on their anniversary (and he'd lost the bet) and now he's actually putting to the use for which it was intended and…whatever.

Ray scrubs his hands over his face and exhales sharply. He's got to get it together, let himself fall back on old memories. This isn't Afghanistan, and it isn't a midnight raid on a meth lab. This is urban warfare, and if Ray's memory can be trusted—and oh it can—this is going to fucking _suck._

"He's slowing down," Worm says. "You sure your boy's in your corner?"

Ray looks up from his hands, glancing from Worm to Gee. Gee's head waggles back and forth, making a dull thunking sound on the wall. Worm sits and watches them. Nothing seems to bother the guy, not being woken up by a crazy calm Gerard Way, or being told to bring his best 'party favor' over an unsecure landline, or…or anything. It's simultaneously annoying and wonderful. Where _has_ Worm been all Ray's life?

He snickers to himself, biting the sound off as soon as it escapes his mouth. Fucking nerves. He's always so damn jumpy before battle.

"Frankie's in love with Mikey," Gee says. "If that isn't enough, I'll take care of it."

Worm nods. "All right," he says, and closes his eyes.

The drive to Bert's is just long enough to shred Ray's nerves into needle sharp points, all digging into the same two spots over his eyes. He hears the van slow, Frankie shouting at the door guard to "open the fucking gate already," and the bag slung over his shoulder to within an easier reach. The van lurches forward, stops about twenty feet in.

Ray feels Gee move into a crouch, and pushes his way in front of him. He reaches into the bag on his shoulder, and takes out his first flash-bang. He pulls the pin, keeping the deadman's switch depressed in his fist. Worm aims the M-60 at the van doors and holds up four fingers. Ray nods. He can hear four voices, three high and one low. Frankie's giggle pierces the air and Gee rocks against Ray's back.

Frankie knocks against the wall of the van, twice. Ray lunges forward, kicking the van doors open and jumping to the floor. He throws the flash-bang to the right and dodges left, angling away from Worm's cover fire as he and Gee—

Oh, Fuck.

Gee damn well _whoops_ for joy, sprinting past Ray and drawing the back up pistol from his side holster. He opens fire, _running_ to meet Bert's men, and they—what the _fuck_\--fall back, skitter to all sides like rats.

"Hello Boys!" Gee yells and Ray concentrates fire on the right side of the fucking _thirty-man crew_ Bert McCracken's got hanging around his fucking warehouse and _Jesus_ there's Worm charging up the field like no fat man should ever have to move.

Ray feels his lips draw back from his teeth. He bobs through the crowd, lobbing a grenade where he thinks it'll do the most good and kicks a stray chair into the guy trying to sneak up on Frankie from behind. Frankie returns the favor, laying down fire in the spots where Gee hasn't already laid waste, with Worm a solid rat-atat-tat presence from behind. Standard formation, almost like he planned it with his old squad and Ray shakes off the pricking against the side of his face, running off the way he stumbles over a corpse that doesn't quite know he's dead and gets a sharp pain for his inattention. It's all smoke and fire where his grenades fragged what ever McCracken stores here, but it's _collateral damage_ that gets the enemy off balance. When no place is safe, the only place left is right into the barrel of Gee's and Frankie's guns.

"Fuck!" Ray shouts, bag finally empty.

He draws his sidearm, drags Gee—a bloodstained Gee, oh God, please not his Gee—behind a crate and gags on the smell of cordite and blood even as he breathes it in deep. He fucking well remembers this.

"McCracken?" he asks.

Gee shakes his head. He throws his arm up over the top of the crate and fires blindly. "No idea."

A high pitched scream, wild and murderous, resounds across the warehouse. Gee grins, leans over and presses his cold mouth to Ray's.

"There's our boy," he says. "I love you."

And before Ray can grab him--tell him he loves him, make Gee _reload_\--Gee's over the side of the crate, trailing laughter in his wake. Ray groans, slaps a fresh clip into his pistol and follows him. He sees a small man, stringy blondish hair hanging in his face and dressed like a homeless man, run down the stairs from the upper office, firing over the handrail and down into the mostly unmoving mass of men on the warehouse floor. McCracken's finally joined the party, and he's brought Quinn Allman with him.

Ray has this flash, this wave of heat pour out of his skin. He sees Allman step out onto the floor behind McCracken, watches how he covers McCracken's back. Worm's down before Ray can even blink, first he's taking aim and then he's on the floor, melting beneath the weight of his M-60. Frankie's off to the side, chasing goons like his life depends on it and Ray doesn't let himself attach a name to the guy Frankie grinds under his boots when he runs out of bullets.

Blood pounds in Ray's ears, smoke strangling his lungs even as he runs forward, covering Gee—always, always, fuck, Bob'll _kill_ them if they die—and then there's no one, no one but Ray and Gee and McCracken and Allman. Gee and McCracken go one way, while Ray and Allman split off towards Frankie, no finesse, no training, and Ray can feel the path of a bullet over his shoulder, no—no, it's _through_ his shoulder, fuck, fuck. Ray dodges, bites his lip and tucks his wounded arm closer to his body. He can hear Gee and McCracken off somewhere to his left, loud as God's own battle, but Allman's quiet, stalking up to Ray like they've got all the time in the world.

Ray braces himself, tastes blood as he pushes off from his crate and ducks behind another. He rolls straight into Frankie, currently slamming his knife into the throat of a guy twice his size.

"Down!" Ray yells, and Frankie drops, leaves his knife and hits the ground just as Allman comes around the side of the crate.

"Oh, you've gotta--"

Allman goes down under Frankie, his gun arm shoved above their heads as they wrestle on the floor. Ray moves up to a sitting position, leaning on the still twitching corpse for balance. Frankie's little, but he's strong and apparently part freaking _octopus_ because Ray can't get a bead on Allman while Frankie's in the way. He aims anyway. It's just Frankie. Frankie the rat. Frankie the betrayer. Frankie…

Ray licks his lips. He blinks sweat from his eyes.

Fucking Frankie better be worth it.

"Roll damn it," Ray yells and Frankie screams into Allman's face, spits in his eye as Frankie _heaves_ them across the floor so that Allman's back is directly in Ray's sights.

Ray fires and Allman drops, limbs collapsing to the concrete. Frankie scrambles out from under the corpse, breathing hard. His eyes pop in their sockets, pale skin crumpling around his mouth. He runs forward, kneeling by Ray and pulling him up to lean on his side.

"Ray?" he asks, like Ray doesn't even know his own name. "Ray?"

"I…don't think I got hit in the shoulder," Ray says. "Or maybe that should be 'just' hit in the shoulder. Where's Gee?"

Frankie bites his lip, his piercing glints in the warehouse lights. They're actually kind of pretty lights, hanging down from the ceiling, piercing the smoke. Ray can feel the adrenaline leaving his body. His hands tingle, arm muscles cramping from being held in the firing position so long. He shakes his head, feeling sweat rolling down his neck.

"Get me up," he says, planting his feet into the concrete and leaning on Frankie's arm. "Where's Gee?"

Frankie shakes his head, stupid long bangs sticking to the sides of his pinched face. Before today, Ray never thought he'd see the day Frankie looked like an old man.

"Let's go find him," he says, and yanks them up.

 

***

 

The most bizarre events in Bob's life have occurred in New Jersey. He lost his job here, lost his boyfriend (although really, Patrick and Pete? Who _hadn't_ seen that coming?) and fell in love with a _mobster_ all in the same zip code. A self-hating mobster at that. One who had an equally hot boyfriend and, apparently, a penchant for threesomes.

Until today, the pros had outweighed the cons. Bob looks over at the card table he set up for Mrs. Way and Brian, they're playing Bridge still. He squeezes his hands on the shot gun in his lap. They'd just moved Mikey to the cot he'd used to put Ray and Gee to bed in when Mrs. Way arrived looking like the world had sucker punched her. Bob figures he hadn't looked much better because Mrs. Way had hugged him after she'd checked on Mikey, and made Bob a cup of coffee. Usually, Mrs. Way didn't make him anything special. Bob understands. Not everybody gets why guys like Ray and Gee bother with a washed up drummer/professional bartender.

Bob's usual thing is just to take his happiness where he can. Gee and Ray—even when they were babbling drunks with more baggage than a passenger train—make him happy. They're sweet and funny and Gee can draw and Ray plays guitar when Bob begs nicely enough and they've given him a home and people. Bob likes being a part of something bigger than himself, likes being the Watch's home base, loves Ray and Gee and Mikey and he's tried to love Matt.

Funny, he hadn't had to _try_ to love Frankie. It'd just happened, and Bob thought he'd been right to trust his instincts.

Mikey coughs wetly, and Bob half-gets up out of his chair. He hears the scrape of a chair against the floor and Brian hustles over to the cot. He leans down, checking Mikey's pulse and temperature. Mikey stirs, but doesn't wake up.

"He's fine," Brian says, returning to the table.

Mrs. Way sighs, puts her face in her hands and takes a deep breath. Her shoulders curl in on themselves, before straightening as she corrects her posture. She lifts a dry face to Brian, and nods.

"Thank you," she says.

They pick up their cards and begin to play again. Mrs. Way's hands only shake when you know what you're looking for, and Bob does. He's seen a lot more than he'd bargained for when Patrick mentioned recording an album "with Thursday, Bob, can you believe it?"

The shotgun is old, but well oiled. Bob added it to the bar himself, no matter that Mr. Koslowski laid his finger against his nose and gave him a talk about what being Handsome Don's boy's favorite bar meant. In Bob's experience, that just meant he knew where he could lay the bill for damages later.

He's never fired a gun before, but in high school he had a friend in drum corp. who told him sometimes people are more afraid of the potential for violence, than the actual violence itself. Bob watches the muscles twitch in Brian's back. He listens to Mikey wheeze in the cot. Hs drum corp. friend was full of shit.

They're going to be fine. Matt's stashed in Jesse Lacey's basement with John and Michelle Nolan for company. Frankie's on their side (he _is_) and Ray's a professional soldier. If those stories he doesn't think he tells while drunk are true, then he's a _very_ professional soldier, and one who'll look after Gee.

Bob winces. He resists the urge to kick his coffee cup across the floor when he's already had to clean up one mess. He loves Gee. He loves Ray. He doesn't say it, maybe doesn't know _how_ to say it, but he does.

He should just be frightened for them. not frightened _of_ them. But he wants his men back. Fucking McCracken.

Bob's coffee cup makes a satisfying smashing noise when he kicks it into the wall.

"…Bob?"

"Sorry, Mrs. Way."

He feels a thin hand with sharp nails press against his shoulder, and ducks his head, closing his eyes. His chest feels a little hollow.

"Did you know," Mrs. Way says, "that I married Gee and Mikey's father six months after I met him?"

"Yeah?" Bob asks.

He looks away, blinking a little too fast, and still sees the image of Gee kissing Frankie against his eyelids. He could have cheerfully broken Frankie's neck from the moment Matt started spewing his drunken guts out on Bob's clean table, and he _still_ felt sorry for Frankie at that moment. Now, he just feels sorry for all of them. What are they going to tell Mikey?

"I'm…"

"It's harder, sometimes," Mrs. Ways says. "Being the one left to pick up all the pieces, clean up the shit."

Bob winces. He really should clean up the broken mug. "Sorry," he mumbles.

He rises and Mrs. Way presses him back into his chair.

"My boys love you," Mrs. Way says. "But it's like my Don loved me. We're home for them, but then they bring work into their home, and expect us to carry on as if our babies aren't getting shot at in the street."

She leans against the table, the one Brian operated on Mikey, and Bob looks up. Her bottle blonde hair crests above her forehead, painted eyebrows perfectly arched, if too highly. The wrinkles around her mouth pucker when she smiles, gently like he's about to go off. Which isn't true. Bob hasn't lost it since high school.

"Call me 'Ma,'" Mrs. Way says. She kisses his head.

Something—a boot maybe—scrapes against the hidden entrance that leads outside into the alley. It was where the bootleggers dropped off their shipments. Frankie'd taken Bob's men and Worm out through that entrance. Bob stands, raising the shotgun and placing himself in front of Mrs.—Ma.

"Brian," Mrs. Way calls out. "Bring me my purse, please."

Bob doesn't turn, just raises the muzzle higher as the something scrapes again. He hears the screech of metal against the rusting door.

"Mrs. Way, I think you--"

"Yes, thank you Brian. Why don't you drag the tables over by Mikey for cover?"

Bob hears the snap as Mrs.—Ma's purse unclasps louder than Brian hiding Mikey from view. He looks over, daring to see something else beyond the way the metal door has begun to sway on its rusting hinges. Ma smiles at him, as gently as ever. She takes a small, pearl-handled pistol from her purse, and set the purse on the floor.

"Now then," she says. "I think we should see the kind of people who think they can take down the Ways."

The door breaks open.

 

***

 

Everyone died too fast, running like the devil was leaving for hell in a minute and they all had to hitch a ride, but now Gee got what he came for. Now, he's got Bert McCracken off by himself and it feels so _good._ He kicks over a smoldering piece of chair and chases Bert into the back of the warehouse, away from (Ray, don't look) the help. Bert's a fast motherfucker, but Gee's got the edge, Gee's got the _motive_ and the _means_ and Bert's aim has always been wide. They run out of bullets around the same time, and Gee's glad of it. The sound was _deafening,_ Bert's screams mixing with the blast of a gun. His knee buckles when Gee blows out his kneecap, and all Gee wants to hear is Bert screaming. He wants that pure sound, raw and bloody as the last time they fucked, because this is _it,_ Gee and Bert's Final Date and Gee couldn't be happier.

"You're such a fucking _princess_ Ger-ar-d!" Bert yells.

Gee ducks behind a crate, runs out the other side and smacks the butt of his pistol into Bert's filthy mouth. Bert's howl of pain is _everything_ Gee's been waiting to hear since he put two bullets in Jepha Howard's forehead over Mikey's body. He laughs, mouth stretching as wide as Bert's—if with more teeth—and tosses them both to the floor.

Their legs tangle as they collide against each other. Gee rabbit punches Bert in the kidneys, curling over Bert's chest and grinding his fist deep into the skin. Bert writhes, whips an arm around Gee's neck and flips them over. Gee's vision darkens, he feels his blood pump hotter, faster with the firing of each muscle as he scratches his fingers across Bert's eye and pushes his head up, trying to dislodge Bert.

"That…all you got, baby?" Bert gasps, giggling even as blood drips down his mouth and onto Gee's gloved hand.

It's a game, always a game with Bert, and for awhile that was enough for Gee too. Even now, Gee grins, feels his lips stretching across his teeth. He gets his feet under him, planted on the concrete and thrusts up. Bert falls sideways, rolling Gee on top and off. Gee staggers to his feet, sucking in burning lungfuls of air. Bert scrambles up after him, hair flying. His left leg drags across the floor, and Bert whimpers with every ounce of weight he's forced to put on it.

He's beautiful like this, screaming with rage and spitting his own blood down his shirt, reaching for Gee like he needs him to breathe, and oh Gee remembers this. He lets Bert catch him, lets Bert dig his teeth in Gee's shoulder and worry the cloth like it was skin. Gee knees him in the groin, buys himself a breather; and flicks open his boot knife. Gee _remembers_ this, would he have been so quick to bring Frankie in if Frankie didn't have Bert's taint all over him? How could Gee _ever_ forget how much alike they were? If Bert'd had family Gee would have sent Ray—

Ice freezes in the pit of Gee's stomach, makes him falter and Bert seizes his chance. He knocks the knife from Gee's hand, winds his arms around Gee's shoulders and goes for the throat. Gee slams his left hand into Bert's shoulder, and grabs a fistful of Bert's hair with his right, holding him at bay inches from Gee's windpipe. Bert snaps his teeth, growling and squirming. His elbows grind against Gee's sides, and he can feel it, feel bruises bloom even as all the heat leeches from his body. The ice in Gee's stomach spirals outward and pierces flesh. He swallows and tastes blood as it soothes the rawness of his throat.

Bert screeches, body undulating on top of Gee's. He's hard, Gee can feel it against his thigh, and he can remember what that used to mean too. Bert's head strains against Gee's hold.

"Let me go, you fucking…_pussy_," Bert says. "Let me go and I'll piss on your grave."

"Mikey," Gee says. "You _bastard._"

From the corner of his eye, he sees his knife on the floor, surrounded by bits and pieces of things Ray blew up. Ray who might be dead because Gee took off and left him without cover. Ray and Bob and Mikey and even Frankie. Oh, God, he's sorry, he never wanted _this_ again, he hadn't. Maybe he'd missed…missed the not caring but he…

He bucks, trying to throw Bert off again and Bert's hands fist in his clothes, refusing to be budged. Gee stretches out his hand, risks letting part of Bert go in order to just _finish_ this before he loses every part of himself he thought he'd regained in the Watch. Bert's fists press up, sliding up Gee's wet, black vest and press up where Bert's teeth couldn't go.

"I hope he's dead," Bert says, "I hope that…that fucking candy assed piece of shit--bled out in your mama's arms."

Bile eats at the ice in Gee's stomach, thick and burning. He hears the pounding of his own blood in his ears, vision shrinking again. His hand scrabbles on the floor, debris gathering the seams of his glove. He wriggles beneath Bert, grimacing as Bert giggles in his face, licks the blood from the corner of his mouth and spits in the air.

The knife is just out of reach, caught on the bottom strut of a crate and if Gerard can get to it, can just _reach_ then it's over, him and Bert, it's over. But he can't breathe, Gerard cannot _breathe,_ body spasming underneath Bert as it begs for air Gee can't give it and it _hurts,_ like a thousand needles dragging across Gee's lungs. He sees spots, stretches out his hand again, and blinks his eyes clear, struggling to keep—

His hand finds a corner of something Ray must have blown up, grasps it tightly and rams into Bert's upturned face. The wood crashes into Bert's nose with a sickening, meaty crunch, wet and awful. Bert's body freezes on top of Gee, limbs suddenly like jelly as they flop—as _Bert_ flops down with a horrific gurgle.

Gee drops his arm, gravity throws it over Bert's shoulders. He crabwalks away, coughing even as he sucks air into his lungs. He looks over at Bert and wipes his mouth, feeling his stomach rebel. Bert's nose is shoved up _into_ his face, blood drenching his lips and chin, pouring out over his chest and down the front of his shirt. His body spasms, then goes still.

Gee feels sick, feels the new him and the old mix and explode. He feels dirty. He doesn't—Jesus, _Bert._

Footsteps stagger across the floor behind him, and Gerard launches to his feet, plucking the knife from the floor. He holds the blade in front of him, ready to stab, and freezes.

"He's really heavy," Frankie says.

He's a real beauty, two black eyes and blood running down his nose. He's got Ray draped against his side, supporting him with one arm wrapped around Ray's waist and a gun in his trembling, free hand. His white shirt is translucent with sweat.

"Screw you," Ray mumbles.

He lifts his head, blood down the entire right side of his face and grins. It's the most horrible smile Gee's ever seen, and the absolute best. He opens his mouth and nothing comes out. Gee wants to laugh, maybe cry, maybe just sleep for years and years. He's killed Bert with a—a piece of _furniture_ or some shit, and it's…he feels like he did, exactly the same, as the day he decided to get clean. Horrified and terrified and so tired he could cry.

"You get him?" Ray asks.

Gee nods, watching the way Ray leans into Frankie for support. He's not…there's something wrong with his leg. Gee steps forward, sways, and grimaces.

"We need to…get in the van," he rasps.

Frankie nods, but Ray pitches forward suddenly, catching himself on Frankie and craning his neck to see behind Gee. Gee clenches his fists, cuts himself on the open blade of his knife and doesn't care. Ray purses his lips.

"Got him in the brainpan, huh," he says.

Gee shrugs. Frankie's eyes widen. He shifts his grip on Ray, dragging them both back a step, and really Frankie…Gee closes his eyes. He wants to go home. Bob's at home. He and Ray can go home and check on Mikey and Ma and…and never come out again. If they'll still have him after this. He's a bad man, and bad men do…they forget themselves and things…happen.

"Worm?" he asks.

"…No," Ray says.

Gee nods and puts one foot in front of him. He puts his knife in his pocket.

"Let's go," he says, and steps forward.

 

***

 

Adrenaline buzzes in Frankie's fingers, making it hard to keep his hands on the wheel. It feels like very muscle in his body, practically, is bruised or strained and he's got Ray possibly bleeding out in the back, but Frankie…he's made his choice. He chose Mikey and the Frankie Iero who makes a _difference_ and it's good, it's really good. He's going…he'll ask Gee if—what happens next. Gee's the man with the plan, after all, and if he doesn't know then Bob or Ray will. (What will they do about Matt? A snitch is a snitch, but Frankie's _proved_ himself. He _has._)

When Frankie pulls around the corner to Koslowski's, a maroon Cadillac is blocking the back entrance to the alley. He parks in front of its back bumper, killing the engine immediately.

Frankie fights down a bubble of hysterical laughter. For a moment, he sits behind the wheel, and just stares. If…_whoever_ parked in that alley, then they knew about the bootleggers entrance, which means Bob and…Mikey—

Frankie reaches behind him and bangs on the back of the cab, slamming his knuckles against the metal until the skin cracks. He jumps out onto the floor, biting his lip to stop from screaming when his ribs protest the motion. Using the side of the van for protection, he runs for the back of the van. The backdoor swings open in his face, and Frankie sidesteps quickly to avoid taking yet another hit to the face.

Gee jumps out, gun in hand. "What?" he asks.

"Car in the alley," Frankie says.

It isn't Mikey's and that's really all that Frankie cares about right now. He's—they're gonna blast through that entryway, kill whoever's in there and _find_ his Mikey. Gee sways, and Frankie grabs his elbow, wincing at how _cold_ Gee is, even through all the layers of his suit. He steps forward, looking into the van where Ray's propped against the wall inside. Ray, bandages covering his body over his clothes, raises his hand.

Frankie nods. He tries to smile, but mostly his face just aches. He doesn't think he manages it.

"Bob?" Gee asks.

"I…no," Frankie says.

In the van, Ray slumps to the floor with barely a whimper, and Frankie swallows. They need to get to that Brian guy, this isn't…Gee steps forward, checking his clip, and Frankie follows. After the warehouse, he figures the safest place in the world right now is _anywhere_ not in front of Gee. The guy fucking _reeks_ of blood and smoke, and he hasn't washed any of it off, just removed his gloves. His hands are bone-white.

Not that Frankie's much better. He wants Mikey and a shower, in that order. He's proved himself, he's chosen his side, Gee can't take Mikey away from him now, can he?

Frankie raises his gun, points it to the left of Gee's back, while Gee walks straight past the car. He makes a soft noise, like he's remembered something, and puts his back to the wall of the alley.

There's a blond man lying facedown over the threshold of the back entrance, blood staining the ground around him. Frankie's breath clogs in his throat, and Gee makes another noise when he sees the dead guy, but Frankie doesn't know what it means.

Gee stumbles, falls back into Frankie, and Frankie presses his face against Gee's upper arm. Gee's suit coat is rough against his bruises, but it feels like the thing to do. He doesn't really want to step over Bob's corpse. He knows what he'll find if Bob's dead.

"Is—is it?" he whispers.

"…too thin," Gee says. "Guy's a fucking stick."

He laughs a little, more like he's trying to clear his throat and that's all that'll come out, than anything else. Frankie lifts his head, breathes a sigh of relief.

He shakes his head at Gee and moves around him. The doorway's empty, busted open and listing on its hinges, and when he cranes his neck so's about three feet inside of it. Gee's hand curls around what feels like Frankie's only unbruised patch of skin. Frankie looks behind him, lets Gee turn him around and lean into him.

"We're not telling Mikey," Gee says. "No matter what."

Gee raises his eyebrows. Frankie wants to hug him, a knot whipping free in his chest faster than a bullet. He waits until Frankie nods before letting go. Gee walks forward and Frankie follows him.

They move in quickly, jumping over the blond corpse with their guns raised, and smack into the barrel of a pump-action shotgun. There's a wild yell, and Gee freezes, smacking his arm over Frankie's chest to hold him back. The muzzle of the gun is pointed straight at Gee's forehead, and Frankie pushes against Gee's arm.

The schmuck holding the shotgun is whip-cord thin, and freaking _tall._ He's dressed like a homeless person, all clashing colors and too-tight clothes. His tight, black curls are bursting from under the brim of a baseball cap, and he's grinning, sharp, white teeth gleaming.

"You have a party and your _Mama_ invites me? Gee, baby, that's not how you treat your friends."

Frankie looks from the schmuck to Gee and back, shaking on the balls of his feet. Adrenaline is pounding in his head. The room is _thrashed,_ tables overturned, boxes smashed, glass everywhere and blood on the floor. There's a neat stack of five dead guys off to one side against the wall, with a dragging trail of blood leading towards the door. Nobody's there, but them and the schmuck. Gee takes a deep breath.

"Where're my boys, Gabe?" he asks, looking at the room through heavy-lidded eyes. "My ma doesn't know your number."

Abruptly, _Gabe_ lowers his shotgun, still grinning like a lunatic. He laughs, slinging the shotgun over his shoulder.

"Nah," he says, "but your Ma knows _my_ Mama, and I always do what my mama tells me."

Gee lets his arms drop, holding his pistol by his side. Frankie brushes past him, sidestepping Gabe and stuffing his gun down the waistband of his pants. There's nothing—nobody in the room, he was right about that, but there should be. Mikey hadn't been in a position to move and it didn't make—

"Well?" Gee asks.

"They're having a party at my girl's place," Gabe says. "You gotta car? I'll take you."

 

***

 

They cram into the front of the van since—apparently—Mikey and Gee's Ma took Gabe's car when they moved camp. Frankie's got his eye on Gabe the entire time, hand curled around the butt of his weapon. Gabe just won't stop smiling, as if this were some kind of joke or—or a game, and it _isn't_ because Mikey's off in some strange house with Bob and Ma, while _Frankie_ has Ray bleeding out in the back of the van and Gee goes fucking nuts in a very real and disturbing manner.

Frankie thinks it might be a better deal to join him. The insanity thing is looking pretty good right now. There's just so _much_ to—to worry about when you're in—in love and Frankie doesn't think he can take another sea change. Mikey is fine. Mikey is fine. Mikey is—

"So they're kind of banged up," Gabe says, and Frankie jumps.

_"What?"_

Gabe puts his foot to the gas, weaving out of one lane and across two others. Frankie grabs the seat strap and hangs on.

"Your guys," Gabe says. "I didn't like to say anything in front of Gee 'cause I'm not stupid, but they ain't all up to par, if you know what I mean. I got there in the middle of it, you know?"

If he opens his mouth, he's going to scream. Frankie concentrates very hard on maintaining the ability to breathe all the way to Gabe's girl's house.

When they get there, Gabe goes first, letting his girl—an absolute _babe_ named Vicky with a hunting rifle—know it's "the heroes back from the war. Where's my virgin sacrifice?" and then comes back to help carry Ray into the house.

Inside, a scruffy, rail-thin guy in a fucking _suit_ is helping Brian wrap a bandage around his upper arm, while a two tinier guys (also in suits) are playing Bridge with Ma. Ma has a bandage on her forehead, just a little one, but Gee has an absolute _melt down_ when he sees it. He barely manages to get Ray on the table for Brian and the guy—Ryland, he used to be shorter--to start doctoring him up, before he's just standing in the middle of the room hyperventilating.

In the living room proper, Gee can see that Ma's got a bandage and Mikey's laid out on a couch, very much asleep, and Bob's nowhere. Bob. Is not there. Maybe he left. Maybe he finally cut his losses and realized he deserved so fucking _much_ better than Gee.

Gee's hands shake, dimly he registers Frankie running past him to hover over Mikey's body, kissing the knuckles of Mikey's hand and rocking on his heels. He can hear Frankie start to sniffle, but all Gee can see is Ma's bandage, the way her hands shake. He watches those hands coming toward him, raised high and flinches, expecting a hit, but instead Ma's arms come around him and drag him close. He buries his head in her shoulder, smells cordite beneath her perfume and retches.

"Hey, hey," she says, kissing the side of Gee's face. He wants to pull away, he's _dirty._

"You do what you had to?" Ma asks softly, and Gee nods. He can't say it.

"Well all right then," Ma says, and steps back. "Vicky, dear? Is it all right if Gerard uses your shower?"

"Yes, Mrs. Way," Vicky says. "It's just down the hall."

Ma pulls back, cupping Gee's face briefly and then steps back. "I'll make sure Ray's taken care of," she says.

Gee looks behind him. Brian's limping around the table, ducking under Ryland's reach. He can see Ray's chest rise and fall. He should stay to see that, just in case Ray stops and then he can find Bob and tell him—he can—he…

_"Gerard Arthur Way,"_ Ma says under her breath.

"Yeah, Ma," he says, and backs away, stumbling against furniture as he walks down the hall to the bathroom.

He turns around, opens the first door and finds a closet. He walks away, trying to get his breathing under control, kill the monster scratching inside his chest, and the next door opens. Gee slams his back against the wall, drawing his gun and pointing it directly in Bob's face.

_"Jesus!"_ Bob yells.

Gee drops the gun, barely flinching when it hits the ground. He's gaping, he must look like a dead fish, but _Bob_ doesn't look much better. He's shirtless, with a bandage wrapped around his chest and a long bandange down his arm. Fresh stitches peek out from the top.

"Gee," Bob says, and grabs him off the wall.

Bob pulls Gee against his body, flattening his wide palms on Gee's back and holding on so tightly Gee's bruises scream for mercy. Gee fists his hands at Bob's waist, pulling on the belt loops of his jeans and starts to shake. Bob presses his mouth against Gee's skin, fitting Gee into the frame of Bob's body.

"Ray?" Bob asks into Gee's neck.

"He—I--"

Bob squeezes tighter. _"Gee?"_

"He's alive," Gee manages. "We're all alive."

Bob shudders in a slow wave. He laughs, kisses the side of Gee's neck, and rocks him. Gee slumps, abruptly exhausted. Bob holds him up.

"Yeah," Bob says. "That's gotta count for something."

 

***

 

The police never find out who wiped out Bert McCracken's entire crew, even though the entire neighborhood knows who did it. Business stops for a long while, but street gossip does a lot with the shoot out at the Hall of Records, Mikeyway and Frankie Iero's Siamese Twin act, and Matt Pelisser's turning up blue and bloated in the bay five miles downstream (Jesse Lacey may be a sullen little bitch, but he's a loyal one, and the Nolans have always been friends of the Ways). Gee's quiet through it all, goes to a lot of AA meetings with Bob and watches Bob and Ray sleep for about a week until exhaustion causes him to face plant into bed at five in the morning. It takes a lot for him to realize they love him, but he never understands why Ray and Bob and Mikey and Ma forgive him. Frankie has the same problem, but he figures he's got enough to make up for that the question can be put on the backburner for awhile.

Once the police release the body, Gee pays for Worm's funeral. They all go, the entire Way/Iero/Toro/Bryar clan lining the church pews right behind Worm's blood family. Jeannie, Worm's sister, cries the entire time and can barely look at Gee. Her new maple cane is noticeably absent.

Ma teaches Bob how to make her spaghetti sauce, and, when he sets fire to it, gives him the number of her favorite take out joint. He still calls her Ma, and has no intention of leaving, though if Toro keeps whining about the _tiny_ piece of shrapnel in his leg, he might consider finding Patrick and inquiring about doing a tour as his sound guy.

The Watch continues, gains an auxiliary with Gabe Saporta's crew, who are more properly based in Long Island with the Nolan-Laceys, and always up for what they call, 'a party.' There's always criminals around, already filling the spot Bert left behind, but Mikey tells Gee he doesn't regret a damn thing every day until Gee believes it, and he's the first one through the door on the very night Brian (who's hitched his ride to the Watch's, he and Bob are learning Bridge from Ma) says Mikey's safe to hit the streets. Koslowski's bar gets a renovation and Bob gets the deed to the building six years later when Mr. Koslowski's retires. He changes the name to Bryar's Bar for the alliteration, and keeps a picture of him, Ray, Mikey, Gee, and Frankie above the bar.


End file.
